Two Weeks In: I Miss Week One

This last week has been dreadful in the $1k challenge. Started the week at $351.90, and while I temporarily climbed as high as $380, the 'roll went crashing down. At my nadir, I hit $287. A run-good, play-against-giant-donks 45 minute session that just ended salvaged the week a bit, and the 'roll is back "up" to $338.03, with rakeback.

Honestly unsure that I played too poorly this last week. Had a couple tilt sessions, but predominantly I had experiences like this. $.05-$.10 6-max NLHE. Effective stacks $10. I wake up UTG with AA and open to $.30. Dude to my 3-bets to $.90, button calls, and I raise to $2. I considered flat calling, but decided that I wouldn't mind scaring one of them off. My 3-better calls, and the btn folds. I like that. Flop is QJ4, two diamonds. A little over $5 in the pot, and I have $8 left. I have the lead and the board is wet, so I bet $3.75. Villain obliges by shoving all in. I call, and he turns over 22. WTF? A 2 hits the turn and I toss my laptop across the room (in spirit, at least).

Had a few of those, and only recall doing that once to somebody once myself. So, the Fates owe me a couple.

I also played a bit of Rush Poker. I adopted a quasi-Sushi Cowboy approach. Narrow pre-flop range. While I earned lots of FTPs, I was upside down about $11 in ~ 1200 hands dealt. The variance is, um, high, and while I'm sure that Martin and others can do well by exploiting the natural Rush Poker junkies, I'm not fond of how it changes my poker perspective. Given that my primary goal here is to learn to play better, I'll stick to the regular old boring ring games.

Back to a question I asked before, but didn't see a response to ----> is there anyway to make a URL of FTP hands so that I can post them??? Marty? I'm looking at you....

One Week In: so far, so good

One week into the $1k or Bust challenge, things are going pretty well. I've played almost exclusively $.05-$.10 on FTP. FTP offers the game full ring, 6-max and heads up, and at each table size it offers regular buy in (100BB), short stack, deep stack, "capped" (haven't looked to see what that means) and with antes. My game of choice is 6-max, deep-stack with antes. Seems to drive greater action (avg pot size definitely bigger). Overall, rakeback and signup bonus* included, I'm up from to $351.90. A little over 3000 hands of play in a week (a lot for me).

No particularly notable hands. Normal # of bad beats, suckouts and coolers. In fact, it's unclear to me how to URL'ize hands played on FTP. Anyone know how? Overall, the larger player pool (as compared to Cake) seems like a huge advantage. Not super impressed by the quality of play, overall.

* As for the signup bonus, I deposited $300 back on March 12 in light of 1:1 signup bonus. For every dollar deposited (up to $500, I think), FTP matched it with a dollar. I failed to read the fine print, and didn't play much while the Cake Challenge II was onoging. Last week, when I started the $1k or Bust challenge, I took a closer look at the FTP Cashier, and noticed two things. First, the bonus isn't a simple deposit, but instead is redeemed $.06 at a time, for every FTP earned (so, every dollar in rake = $.06). At $.05-$10 stakes, it takes a while. Second, I noticed that the bonus is paid in $20 increments, meaning you have to earn $20 of redemption, $.06 at a time, before anything is handed over. With 3000k hands of play in a week, I've earned just over $20 in bonus, so at least I got something out of it. Finally, I noticed that the promotion expires on 7/12 (4 months from signup), and thus my $300 signup bonus will likely amount to $20. All of this is my fault, obviously, as I'm sure the terms of the bonus were readily apparent...had I bothered to look. Anywho, at least I got $20.

$1k or bust

Given my assumption that there will be little interest in an immediate beginning to Cake Challenge III, I've decided to begin my own quest. Gonna try to turn my $300 on FTP into $1k in a year. Unsure if that's an overly-lofty goal or a soft one. My instinct is that it'll be difficult, especially given the smaller rakeback and the (presumably) tougher opponents as I'm playing in higher stakes games. I'll start off at $.05-$.10 and maybe $.10-$.20, and will endeavor to abide by proper bankroll management principles (which I understand to be 5% buyin; 10% at risk). Of course, if it's June 15, 2011 and I'm at $412, proper bankroll management may go out the window.....

Interested in:

1) thoughts on whether this is overly- or underly-ambitious;

2) whether anyone else wishes to join in the challenge; and

3) whether a sushi/jason-like book should be established, regardless of the answe to 2.